Coming from a state that spends less on its colleges than 47 states, Christopher Maples is all too familiar with budget cuts and disinvestment in higher education.
Faced with reductions in funding, universities are left with few options for balancing their budgets, like cutting programs or raising tuition, to name a few.
But Maples, president of the Oregon Institute of Technology and a candidate to become Marshall University's 37th school chief, said students shouldn't be the ones to bear the brunt of those cuts.
"Students are now the primary stakeholders in their education," he said Thursday during a meeting with Marshall faculty and staff at its graduate college campus in South Charleston. "They're paying more now than anyone else."
Maples is one of three presidential finalists, and the last to interview this week with Marshall University officials. On Thursday, he met with students, faculty, staff and community members in South Charleston and at the college's engineering complex in Huntington. He'll be in Huntington on Friday for additional meetings.
While the other two candidates, Jerome Gilbert and Denis Wiesenburg, both have administrative experience as provosts, Maples is the only candidate to serve as a university president.
With many colleges now bringing in more dollars from tuition than state appropriations, Maples said students should have the resources they need to ensure they complete their degree.
"It's one of the most disingenuous things we can do to bring them here and them not get a degree," he said, referencing universities cutting student resources to balance their budgets.
Having faced the difficult decision of deciding what to cut at Oregon Tech after years of funding reductions nearly halved the budget, Maples chose to offset those losses by reducing administrative spending and curtailing outreach programs aimed at attracting high school students.
Almost with an air of pride, Maples said, despite those cuts, reducing the overhead allowed him to hire more professors.
"We have to focus on students we already have," he said. "We wanted to focus on graduating the students that are already here."
Unless West Virginia experiences an economic boom, which is unlikely according to a West Virginia University report on the state's economic outlook, the next president will likely have to deal with a similar situation Maples was in.
State funding for Marshall has been reduced by nearly $9 million since 2013, and the university's budget likely will be cut again this year due to across-the-board 4 percent cuts to most state agencies. Spending on public two- and four-year colleges is at a decade-low, according to state Higher Education Policy Commission data.
Following Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's budget cut announcement last week, Marshall interim President Gary White said the university budgeted conservatively, though it would have to absorb a possible $2 million loss in funding.
Maples said losses can't be spread out "like peanut butter on toast."
"That's a quick step to mediocrity."
While Maples briefly discussed recruitment and marketing, topics the other two presidential candidates talked about at length, he primarily focused on students and how he is determined to improve graduation.
Part of accomplishing that, he said, is offering completer grants for students who otherwise would drop out for financial reasons, something he said was done at Oregon Tech.
"Students would get through three of four years, working part time on the side, and then they'd drop out to save up money," he said, later adding that was something he did himself when he was a student.
"It's so hard to come back when you've dropped out."
Continuing his focus on students, Maples said his role on campus, should he be chosen to be the next president, would be externally focused and that he would want to be involved with students, faculty and staff as well as in the community where he would "deliver the message of why this school is important."
When asked why he wants to come to Marshall, Maples said, "It's large enough to make a difference," later adding that his 4,500 students in Oregon have affected the state but that he would like to see that done on a broader level.
The search for a new school chief officially started in March, following the unexpected death of former President Stephen Kopp in December, when Marshall contracted with Washington, D.C.-based executive search firm AGB Search, Inc. The firm has been paid about $70,000.
A new president initially was scheduled to take office in August in time for the fall semester's start, but that deadline was pushed back in May after a search committee decided six candidates its members met with would not be brought back for finalist interviews.
Interim President Gary White, who joined the university in January, was not considered a candidate for the permanent position.
A second round of six candidates were interviewed in September.
Once the interviews end Friday with Maples making a final round of visits in Huntington, the search committee will consider which candidate will be recommended to the university board, which will make a final selection. The finalist must then be approved by the state Higher Education Policy Commission.
Videos of each candidate's meetings on campus have been archived and can be viewed online at www.marshall.edu/it/livestream.
The new president is expected to join the university before the start of the spring semester in January.
Reach Samuel Speciale at sam.speciale@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-7939 or follow @samueljspeciale on Twitter.